For endurance athletes and people interested in the active lifestyle GET ACTIVATED!
Thursday, December 27, 2007
Anonymous Racer X: Hog Heaven
Back in August my agent, Chuck, who also is my mailman, received advance word that I likely would be named in the Mitchell Report. Being the only amateur triathlete highlighted in the midst of all these cheating professional baseball players was the X Man's greatest honor. I'm sure the connection was my masseuse, Brandii, who had dated the Canseco brothers before we hooked up in my Land Cruiser one Saturday morning after a sprint tri in Charlotte.
But being called out also was uncool in one big way. In case the ITU wanted to make an example out of me, I had to preempt any potential punitive action by laying low and disappearing from the tri scene for a while.
I've been bummed and burned out since The Bachelor didn't return my wave right before I DNF'd on the Ironman Louisville bike course due to a mechanical problem with my water bottle cage. So I sold Bernice, my Softride, and bought a one-way ticket to London to camp out for Led Zeppelin tickets at The 02 earlier this month. Dude, there's nothing better than crossing the finish line of a tri and knowing you are going to take home hardware, but rocking hard to Stairway with a bunch of stoned Brits...that's a close second.
This "no-nonsense look at the often nonsensical world of fitness clubs" warns people about depending on machines for our workouts. It turns out, for example, that a leg-extension machine trains you to do one thing: "become very strong at the leg-extension machine." Some common-sense points, for sure. Ninety percent of the people I see working with personal trainers at the fitness club would be better off just walking around their neighborhood for an hour each day.
The Ottawa Citizen's Mark Sutcliffe doesn't like NBC's approach to covering the Ironman World Championships as "The Ultimate Metaphor for Life. He points out some Al Trautwigisms:
"'The broken shoulder of Natascha Badmann. 'That one hurt.' As opposed to those broken shoulders that feel like falling on a bed of feathers."
"Today is a word worse than hot, when whatever experience you have may be the key."
"One thing you notice about him is the barrel chest of a rugby player and the next (pause) is that he has no legs."
Everybody's got a hunger, a hunger they can't resist. There's so much that you want, you deserve much more than this. But if dreams came true, oh, wouldn't that be nice. But this ain't no dream we're living through tonight. Girl, you want it, you take it, you pay the price. - From "Prove It All Night," by Bruce Springsteen
One of the endearingly puzzling features of the YMCA spinning class led by Activeness' one and only JPD is the blurred line between the warmup, actual workout and cooldown. A few minutes into the class, your heart rate will be pushing 180 BPM and you'll be soaked in sweat while hammering through a set of intervals and JPD will look up and say, "The warmup is almost over." If that's the warmup...wow. Likewise the first few minutes of his cooldown can feel like a race simulation. But JPD's rationale, which makes sense, is, "Why waste 10 minutes of a 60-minute class not working hard?"
I tend to be a patient guy with a bit of a bleeding heart, but I lose that patience with people who are wasting their time on earth by not pushing themselves in some way. This could be through physical activity, at work, in class, on an instrument, trying something new, or just in improving their relationships. It's a question that haunts my thoughts every day: "Are you fulfilling your potential?"
If you're just coasting through life watching reality TV, perusing sales at the mall and not questioning the status quo, shaking things up a little, or pushing yourself to break through self-imposed barriers, then you probably won't appear on my current roster of friends. If you're part of this generation of Generation-Nexters who think you're entitled to adulation and the corner office just because you sit in your Aeron chair and look busy for eight hours a day, get over yourself. Showing up at the starting line and "waddling on" with the Penguin isn't enough. And if you're not happy with the results you're getting, the only direction your finger should be pointing is straight into the mirror.
Though I shy away from some of the type-A Racer Xs and Racer Xettes of the triathlon world — specifically those who have lost perspective on the importance of the sport — I always admire their extreme competency and absolute dedication. The mass competency on display at the starting line of a race can take your breath away. But if you don't do the hard work required to get ready for a race or even to prepare for a long run or ride with friends, you'll be exposed. No excuses and no shortcuts, just dead on the pavement. People have a variety of body types and abilities and time available for training, of course. But it's a level playing field when it comes to the willingness to put yourself out there and really try. There's something to that, and it used to be the American way. Waste not, want not, and make something happen. Instead, I look around and it seems like we've lost our way while wandering through Wal-Mart.
If you've ever spent a week as a patient in a hospital room or any time helping a loved one struggling with his or her health, you probably agree with JPD that we should be pushing hard for that extra 10 minutes.
If you want respect, earn it. If you have dreams, do the work and make the sacrifices to make them happen. You need to "prove it all night," as The Boss sings on his classic from Darkness on the Edge of Town, an album (remember those?) that got me through many a stationary bike (remember those?) ride in my parents' basement 22 years ago. The Boss is 58 now, but if you go 4 minutes into that YouTube video above I defy you to not get chills from his blistering guitar duel with Little Steven (Hey, he looks like that one guy from The Sopranos!). From what I've heard about his current tour, Bruce is still proving it all night, every night: Are you?
Prolific Tri Blogger Apologizes to Blogosphere for Omitting Critical Details
From "The Triathlonion," December 2, 2007
CHARLOTTE—In a landmark blog post sending shockwaves across the Internet, a remorseful Art Dunbar apologized to the tri-blogosphere on Saturday for not sharing enough details about his daily thoughts and workouts in his 3,900 posts over the past three years. "I feel like the world doesn't even know what really makes Art Art," lamented Dunbar.
To compensate, the 39-year-old Dunbar revealed plans to embark on a 5,000-mile, one-year journey in which he will personally visit the homes of his blog's 217 daily readers. "We'll sit down face to face and share a Gatorade, maybe go on a 30-minute run-walk," wrote Dunbar. "I'll be attempting to atone for my countless omissions about 'livin' the tri life' by answering their questions about all the details that I just haven't had time to blog about."
"I, for one, am grateful that Art is finally making this long-overdue journey," wrote Pleasejustri4JesusSistah, in an uncharacteristically short 3,000-word Saturday blog post. "I mean, how can Art summarize what really happened during his 16 hours and 57 minutes out on an Ironman course in one blog post — or even over a series of weeklong posts? The answer is he can't. So these personal conversations will be invaluable in helping his admirers fill in the gaps."
Dunbar, who gained valuable writing experience during his tenure as a mortgage loan officer at Wachovia, where he enjoyed company-wide notoriety for generating a prodigious amount of memos, also is self-publishing an 'autoblogography' as a compilation of his best blog posts. He expects to offer the 1,050-page tome for sale on his blog by next week — just in time for the holiday shopping season.
Dunbar also announced that he has purchased exclusive rights to the life experiences and thoughts of widely respected tri-blogger ONoUDontEvenTri2StopMeFool. "It gives me a little buffer zone," explained Dunbar. "Once I've blogged about all the minutiae of my own training and life, I'll now have this whole other reservoir of experiences to tap into. Having the ability to tell the stories of ONoUDontEvenTri2StopMeFool as if they are my own is like saving an extra gear for the final kilometer of a killer climb. And that totally rocks."
